Wow! I had no idea there was so much stuff you wished I’d write more about!
So, since I’m lying in bed with coffee and my laptop and not getting anything ELSE done, why not babble a little now?
For Mary:
Hockey is definitely in my blood… it was inevitable that I would become a fan.
My grandfather played in the farm system of what would become today’s NHL, and my dad played in rec leagues throughout my childhood.
I was on skates pretty early on, too, and spent some time growing up in Edmonton during their “hockey dynasty” years, which accounts for the fact that I like the Canucks, not the Oilers, and Mark Messier is a mythically evil figure in my life.
It was always going on around me, really. Hockey was something to love.
But I didn’t TRULY come into my own fanship until my late teens-early twenties, when I began to fall in love with hockey players wholesale and spend all my Saturday nights watching my friends play at tiny community arenas.
Then I started to absorb stats and highlight reels with vigour… and it was all downhill from there.
Today, I am a die-hard, non-bandwagon, devoted no-matter-what Canucks fan, and will be that way until they put me in the cold, hard ground. Or the cold, hard ice, on a particularly vicious check.
For Liz:
Sports thuggery is a major pet peeve of mine, actually. As a hockey fan, I’m pretty used to guys mixing it up on the ice, but the inability to keep cool OFF the ice is really not cool. Fortunately (and I say that wryly), hockey players tend to be more of the “bar fight” variety of idiot, and not so much the “cap in your ass” types.
Many of them actually come from small towns on the prairies and Quebec where their mothers would have tossed them in the well if they’d shown up late for chores or even talked back. Lots of family influence, lots of religious influence, lots of strong role models.
Then again, hockey parents can be HORRIBLE. So it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other.
I do watch the NFL (never been a huge basketball girl), and I’m pretty disappointed by how some of the players conduct themselves.
The sad thing is that a sudden influx of money into the lives of many professional athletes creates power and conflict situations that they just aren’t prepared to deal with, and things unravel accordingly.
Background plays some role, cultural forces play some role, external relationships play some role, and team dynamics DEFINITELY play some role, but at the end of the day, there’s no excuse for abusing your privilege. I don’t care where you come from.
I believe in criminal charges, harsh suspensions, major fines, and league sanctions for athletes that take liberties on AND off the field. Period.
For Shane:
Onions make you cry because they’re nasty little bitches.
Sure, HowStuffWorks.com says this:
“When you slice through an onion, you break open a number of onion cells. Some of these cells have enzymes inside of them, and when they are sliced open, the enzymes escape. The enzymes then decompose some of the other substances that have escaped from sliced cells. Some of these substances, amino acid sulfoxides, form sulfenic acids, which then quickly rearrange themselves into a volatile gas.”
But I believe that there is just a natural human-onion conflict — like that which exists between men and women — that creates this phenomenon. And sadly, unlike the gender crisis, we don’t have sex to make it all better. So we cry.
And don’t even think about having sex with an onion. You think it hurts your eyes? Wait until they get at your bits.
For Barbie:
Yes, I do often wonder about peoples’ blog names. Sometimes, they explain the little “nicks” in their “About Me” page, and sometimes I actually just email them about it out of boundless curiosity.
Usually, however, according to the content of the blog, you can kind of figure out why they chose the name they chose. But, again… if I wonder, I ask.
I will admit that really weird, lengthy, oddball blog monikers make me roll my eyes a little, mostly because you’re not really helping anyone remember you if you make it too complicated. But that might not be what you want, anyway.
(Oh — and any blog that uses “69″ in the URL or nick is dead to me. Ha!)
Many people use their blogs as an anonymous place to vent or express things they need a special outlet for, and that’s totally cool. I love that the Web has given them that opportunity to seek out community.
I do that, too, but I don’t write about work, or express frustration that I don’t express to the source of the frustration first. That keeps me out of hot water… generally.
When people email me about starting blogs, I usually advocate for starting under their own names if they are looking to build a writing career… otherwise, it just doesn’t matter. Many people feel safer in general with a pseudonym, too, especially if they have kids.
More to come!
